The Banquet given by a large number
of the Members of the two Houses of Congress to Kossuth
took place at the National Hotel, in Washington City.
The number present was about two hundred and fifty.
The Hon. Wm. R. King, of Alabama, president of the
Senate, presided. On his right sat Louis Kossuth,
and on his left the Hon. Daniel Webster, Secretary
of State. On the right of Kossuth at the same
table, sat the Hon. Linn Boyd, speaker of the House
of Representatives. Besides other distinguished
guests who responded to toasts, are named Hon. Thomas
Corwin, Secretary of the Treasury, and Hon. Alex.
H. H. Stuart, Secretary of the Interior.

A few minutes after eight o’clock,
a large number of ladies were admitted, and the President
of the Senate requested gentlemen to fill their glasses
for the first toast, which was,

“The President of the United States.”

To this, Mr. Webster responded.

The President then announced the second toast:

“The Judiciary of the United
States: The expounder of the Constitution and
the bulwark of liberty regulated by law.”

Judge Wayne, of the Supreme Court
of the United States, replied, and after alluding
to “The distinguished stranger” who was
then among them, said: I give you, gentlemen,
as a sentiment:

“Constitutional liberty to all
the nations of the earth, supported by Christian faith
and the morality of the Bible.”

The toast was received with enthusiastic applause.

The third toast was,

“The Navy of the United States:
The home squadron everywhere. Its glory was illustrated,
when its flag in a foreign sea gave liberty and protection
to the Hungarian Chief.”

Mr. Stanton, of Tennessee, in his reply, said:

But recently, Mr. President, a new
significance has been given to this flag. Heretofore,
the navy has been the symbol of our power and the
emblem of our liberty, but now it speaks of humanity
and of a noble sympathy for the oppressed of all nations.
The home squadron everywhere, to give protection
to the brave and to those who may have fallen in the
cause of freedom! Your acquiescence in that sentiment
indicates the profound sympathy of the people of the
United States for the people of Hungary, manifested
in the person of their great chief; and I can conceive
of no duty that would be more acceptable to the gallant
officers of the navy of the United States except one,
and that is, to strike a blow for liberty themselves
in a just cause, approved by our Government.

The fourth toast was,

“The army of the united states.
In saluting the illustrious Exile with magnanimous
courtesy, as high as it could pay to any Power on earth,
it has added grace to the glory of its history.”

General Shields, Senator for Illinois,
Chairman of the Committee of Military Affairs in the
Senate, being loudly called for, replied in the necessary
absence of General Scott, the chief of the army; and
after an appropriate acknowledgment of the toast,
added:

In paving this very high honor to
our illustrious guest this noble Hungarian let
me observe that that army which has been toasted to-night
spoke for his reception by the voice of their cannon;
and the cannon that spoke there spoke the voice of
twenty-five millions of people. Sir, that salute
which the American cannon gave the Hungarian exile
had a deep meaning in it. It was not a salute
to the mere man Louis Kossuth, but it was a salute
in favour of the great principle which he represents the
principle which he advocates, the principle of nationality
and of human liberty. Sir, I was born in a land
which has suffered as an oppressed nation. I
am now a citizen of a land which would have suffered
from the same power, had it not been for the bravery,
gallantry, and good fortune of the men of that time.
Sir, as an Irishman by birth, and an American by adoption,
I would feel myself a traitor to both countries if
I did not sustain downtrodden nationalities everywhere in
Hungary, in Poland, in Germany, in Italy everywhere
where man is trodden down and oppressed. And,
sir, I say again, that that army which maintained
itself in three wars against one of the greatest and
most powerful nations of the world, will, if the trying
time should come again, maintain that same flag (the
stars and stripes) and the same triumph, and the same
victories in the cause of liberty. [Great applause.]

The president of the evening then,
after a cordial speech, proposed the fifth toast:

“Hungary, represented in the
person of our honoured Guest, having proved herself
worthy to be free by the virtues and valour of her
sons, the law of nations and the dictates of justice
alike demand that she shall have fair play in her
struggle for independence.”

This toast was received with immense
applause, which lasted several minutes.

Kossuth then rose and spoke as follows:

Sir: As once Cineas the Epirote
stood among the Senators of Rome, who, with a word
of self-conscious majesty, arrested kings in their
ambitious march thus, full of admiration
and of reverence, I stand amongst you, legislators
of the new Capitol, that glorious hall of your people’s
collective majesty. The Capitol of old yet stands,
but the spirit has departed from it, and is come over
to yours, purified by the air of liberty. The
old stands a mournful monument of the fragility of
human things: yours as a sanctuary of eternal
right. The old beamed with the red lustre of
conquest, now darkened by the gloom of oppression;
yours is bright with freedom. The old absorbed
the world into its own centralized glory; yours protects
your own nation from being absorbed, even by itself.
The old was awful with unrestricted power; yours is
glorious by having restricted it. At the view
of the old, nations trembled; at the view of yours,
humanity hopes. To the old, misfortune was introduced
with fettered hands to kneel at triumphant conquerors’
feet; to yours the triumph of introduction is granted
to unfortunate exiles who are invited to the honour
of a seat. And where Kings and Caesars never
will be hailed for their power and wealth, there the
persecuted chief of a downtrodden nation is welcomed
as your great Republic’s guest, precisely because
he is persecuted, helpless, and poor. In the
old, the terrible voe victis! was the rule;
in yours, protection to the oppressed, malediction
to ambitious oppressors, and consolation to a vanquished
just cause. And while from the old a conquered
world was ruled, you in yours provide for the common
federative interests of a territory larger than that
old conquered world. There sat men boasting that
their will was sovereign of the earth; here sit men
whose glory is to acknowledge “the laws of nature
and of nature’s God,” and to do what their
sovereign, the People, wills.

Sir, there is history in these contrasts.
History of past ages and history of future centuries
may be often recorded in small facts. The particulars
to which the passion of living men clings, as if human
fingers could arrest the wheel of Destiny, these particulars
die away; it is the issue which makes history, and
that issue is always coherent with its causes.
There is a necessity of consequences wherever the
necessity of position exists. Principles are the
alpha: they must finish with omega,
and they will. Thus history may be often told
in a few words.

Before the heroic struggle of Greece
had yet engaged your country’s sympathy for
the fate of freedom, in Europe then so far distant
and now so near, Chateaubriand happened to be in Athens,
and he heard from a minaret raised upon the
Propylaeum’s ruins a Turkish priest in the Arabic
language announcing the lapse of hours to the Christians
of Minerva’s town. What immense history
there was in the small fact of a Turkish Imaum crying
out, “Pray, pray! the hour is running fast, and
the judgment draws near.”

Sir, there is equally a history of
future ages written in the honour bestowed by you
on my humble self. The first Governor of Independent
Hungary, driven from his native land by Russian violence;
an exile on Turkish soil, protected by a Mahommedan
Sultan from the blood-thirst of Christian tyrants;
cast back a prisoner to far Asia by diplomacy; was
at length rescued from his Asiatic prison, when America
crossed the Atlantic, charged with the hopes of Europe’s
oppressed nations. He pleads, as a poor exile,
before the people of this great Republic, his country’s
wrongs and its intimate connection with the fate of
the European continent, and, in the boldness of a
just cause, claims that the principles of the Christian
religion be raised to a law of nations. To see
that not only is the boldness of the poor exile forgiven,
but that he is consoled by the sympathy of millions,
encouraged by individuals, associations, meetings,
cities, and States; supported by effective aid and
greeted by Congress and by Government as the nation’s
guest; honoured, out of generosity, with that honour
which only one man before him received (a man who
had deserved them from your gratitude,) with honours
such as no potentate ever can receive, and this banquet
here, and the toast which I have to thank you for:
oh! indeed, sir, there is a history of future ages
in all these facts! They will go down to posterity
as the proper consequences of great principles.

Sir, though I have a noble pride in
my principles, and the inspiration of a just cause,
still I have also the consciousness of my personal
insignificance. Never will I forget what is due
from me to the Sovereign Source of my public
capacity. This I owe to my nation’s dignity;
and therefore, respectfully thanking this highly distinguished
assembly in my country’s name, I have the boldness
to say that Hungary well deserves your sympathy; that
Hungary has a claim to protection, because it has
a claim to justice. But as to myself, I am well
aware that in all these honours I have no personal
share. Nay, I know that even that which might
seem to be personal in your toast, is only an acknowledgment
of a historical fact, very instructively connected
with a principle valuable and dear to every republican
heart in the United States of America. As to
ambition, I indeed never was able to understand how
anybody can love ambition more than liberty. But
I am glad to state a historical fact, as a principal
demonstration of that influence which institutions
exercise upon the character of nations.

We Hungarians are very fond of the
principle of municipal self-government, and we have
a natural horror against centralization. That
fond attachment to municipal self-government, without
which there is no provincial freedom possible, is
a fundamental feature of our national character.
We brought it with us from far Asia a thousand years
ago, and we preserved it throughout the vicissitudes
of ten centuries. No nation has perhaps so much
struggled and suffered for the civilized Christian
world as we. We do not complain of this lot.
It may be heavy, but it is not inglorious. Where
the cradle of our Saviour stood, and where His divine
doctrine was founded, there now another faith rules:
the whole of Europe’s armed pilgrimage could
not avert this fate from that sacred spot, nor stop
the rushing waves of Islamism from absorbing the Christian
empire of Constantine. We stopped those rushing
waves. The breast of my nation proved a breakwater
to them. We guarded Christendom, that Luthers
and Calvins might reform it. It was a dangerous
time, and its dangers often placed the confidence of
all my nation into one man’s hand. But
there was not a single instance in our history where
a man honoured by his people’s confidence deceived
them for his own ambition. The man out of whom
Russian diplomacy succeeded in making a murderer of
his nation’s hopes, gained some victories when
victories were the chief necessity of the moment, and
at the head of an army, circumstances gave him the
ability to ruin his country; but he never had the
people’s confidence. So even he is no contradiction
to the historical truth, that no Hungarian whom his
nation honoured with its confidence was ever seduced
by ambition to become dangerous to his country’s
liberty. That is a remarkable fact, and yet it
is not accidental; it springs from the proper influence
of institutions upon the national character.
Our nation, through all its history, was educated
in the school of local self-government; and in such
a country, grasping ambition having no field, has
no place in man’s character.

The truth of this doctrine becomes
yet more illustrated by a quite contrary historical
fact in France. Whatever have been the changes
of government in that great country and
many they have been, to be sure we have
seen a Convention, a Directorate, Consuls, and one
Consul, and an Emperor, and the Restoration, and the
Citizen King, and the Republic; Through all these
different experiments centralization was the keynote
of the institutions of France power always
centralized; omnipotence always vested somewhere.
And, remarkable indeed, France has never yet raised
one single man to the seat of power, who has not sacrificed
his country’s freedom to his personal ambition!

It is sorrowful indeed, but it is
natural. It is in the garden of centralization
that the venomous plant of ambition thrives. I
dare confidently affirm, that in your great country
there exists not a single man through whose brains
has ever passed the thought, that he would wish to
raise the seat of his ambition upon the ruins of your
country’s liberty, if he could. Such a
wish is impossible in the United States. Institutions
react upon the character of nations. He who sows
wind will reap storm. History is the revelation
of Providence. The Almighty rules by eternal
laws not only the material but also the moral world;
and as every law is a principle, so every principle
is a law. Men as well as nations are endowed
with free-will to choose a principle, but, that once
chosen, the consequences must be accepted.

With self-government is freedom, and
with freedom is justice and patriotism. With
centralization is ambition, and with ambition dwells
despotism. Happy your great country, sir, for
being so warmly attached to that great principle of
self-government. Upon this foundation your fathers
raised a home to freedom more glorious than the world
has ever seen. Upon this foundation you have
developed it to a living wonder of the world.
Happy your great country, sir! that it was selected
by the blessing of the Lord to prove the glorious
practicability of a federative union of many sovereign
States, all preserving their State-rights and their
self-government, and yet united in one every
star beaming with its own lustre, but altogether one
constellation on mankind’s canopy.

Upon this foundation your free country
has grown to prodigious power in a surprizingly brief
period, a power which attracts by its fundamental
principle. You have conquered by it more in seventy-five
years than Rome by arms in centuries. Your principles
will conquer the world. By the glorious example
of your freedom, welfare, and security, mankind is
about to become conscious of its aim. The lesson
you give to humanity will not be lost. The respect
for State-rights in the Federal Government of America,
and in its several States, will become an instructive
example for universal toleration, forbearance, and
justice to the future States, and Republics of Europe.
Upon this basis those mischievous questions of language-nationalities
will be got rid of, which cunning despotism has raised
in Europe to murder liberty. Smaller States will
find security in the principle of federative union,
while they will preserve their national freedom by
the principle of sovereign self-government; and while
larger States, abdicating the principle of centralization
will cease to be a blood-field to unscrupulous usurpation
and a tool to the ambition of wicked men, municipal
institutions will ensure the development of local
elements; freedom, formerly an abstract political
theory, will be brought to every municipal hearth;
and out of the welfare and contentment of all parts
will flow happiness, peace, and security for the whole.

That is my confident hope. Then
will the fluctuations of Germany’s fate at once
subside. It will become the heart of Europe, not
by melting North Germany into a Southern frame, or
the South into a Northern; not by absorbing historical
peculiarities into a centralized omnipotence; not
by mixing all in one State, but by federating several
sovereign States into a Union like yours.

Upon a similar basis will take place
the national regeneration of Sclavonic States, and
not upon the sacrilegious idea of Panslavism, which
means the omnipotence of the Czar. Upon a similar
basis shall we see fair Italy independent and free.
Not unity, but union will and must become the
watchword of national members, hitherto torn rudely
asunder by provincial rivalries, out of which a crowd
of despots and common servitude arose. In truth
it will be a noble joy to your great Republic to feel
that the moral influence of your glorious example has
worked this happy development in mankind’s destiny;
nor have I the slightest doubt of the efficacy of
that example.

But there is one thing indispensable
to it, without which there is no hope for this happy
issue. It is, that the oppressed nations of Europe
become the masters of their future, free to regulate
their own domestic concerns. And to this nothing
is wanted but to have that “fair play”
to all, for all, which you, sir, in your toast,
were pleased to pronounce as a right of my nation,
alike sanctioned by the law of nations as by the dictates
of eternal justice. Without this “fair play”
there is no hope for Europe no hope of seeing
your principles spread.

Yours is a happy country, gentlemen.
You had more than fair play. You had active and
effectual aid from Europe in your struggle for independence,
which, once achieved, you used so wisely as to become
a prodigy of freedom and welfare, and a lesson of
life to nations.

But we in Europe we, unhappily,
have no such fair play. With us, against every
pulsation of liberty all despots are united in a common
league; and you may be sure that despots will never
yield to the moral influence of your great example.
They hate the very existence of this example.
It is the sorrow of their thoughts, and the incubus
of their dreams. To stop its moral influence
abroad, and to check its spread at home, is what they
wish, instead of yielding to its influence.

We shall have no fair play. The
Cossack already rules, by Louis Napoleon’s usurpation,
to the very borders of the Atlantic Ocean. One
of your great statesmen now, to my deep
sorrow, bound to the sick bed of far advanced age (alas!
that I am deprived of the advice which his wisdom
could have imparted to me) your great statesman
told the world thirty years ago that Paris was transferred
to St. Petersburg. What would he now say, when
St. Petersburg is transferred to Paris, and Europe
is but an appendage to Russia?

Alas! Europe can no longer secure
to Europe fair play. England only remains; but
even England casts a sorrowful glance over the waves.
Still, we will stand our ground, “sink or swim,
live or die.” You know the word; it is
your own. We will follow it; it will be a bloody
path to tread. Despots have conspired against
the world. Terror spreads over Europe, and persecutes
by way of anticipation. From Paris to Pesth there
is a gloomy silence, like the silence of nature before
the terrors of a hurricane. It is a sensible
silence, disturbed only by the thousandfold rattling
of muskets by which Napoleon prepares to crush the
people who gave him a home when he was an exile, and
by the groans of new martyrs in Sicily, Milan, Vienna,
and Pesth. The very sympathy which I met in England,
and was expected to meet here, throws my sisters into
the dungeons of Austria. Well, God’s will
be done! The heart may break, but duty will be
done. We will stand our place, though to us in
Europe there be no “fair play.” But
so much I hope, that no just man on earth can charge
me with unbecoming arrogance, when here, on this soil
of freedom, I kneel down and raise my prayer to God:
“Almighty Father of Humanity, will thy merciful
arm not raise up a power on earth to protect the law
of nations when there are so many to violate it?”
It is a prayer and nothing else. What would remain
to the oppressed if they were not even permitted to
pray? The rest is in the hand of God.

Sir, I most fervently thank you for
the acknowledgment that my country has proved worthy
to be free. Yes, gentlemen, I feel proud at my
nation’s character, heroism, love of freedom
and vitality; and I bow with reverential awe before
the decree of Providence which has placed my country
into a position such that, without its restoration
to independence, there is no possibility for freedom
and independence of nations on the European continent.
Even what now in France is coming to pass proves the
truth of this. Every disappointed hope with which
Europe looked towards France is a degree more added
to the importance of Hungary to the world. Upon
our plains were fought the decisive battles for Christendom;
there will be fought the decisive battle for
the independence, of nations, for State rights, for
international law, and for democratic liberty.
We will live free, or die like men; but should my
people be doomed to die, it will be the first whose
death will not be recorded as suicide, but as a martyrdom
for the world, and future ages will mourn over the
sad fate of the Magyar race, doomed to perish, not
because we deserved it, but because in the nineteenth
century there was nobody to protect “the laws
of nature and of nature’s God.”

But I look to the future with confidence
and with hope. Manifold adversities could not
fail to impress some mark of sorrow upon my heart,
which is at least a guard against sanguine illusions.
But I have a steady faith in principles. Once
in my life indeed I was deplorably deceived in my
anticipations, from supposing principle to exist in
quarters where it did not. I did not count on
generosity or chivalrous goodness from the governments
of England and France, but I gave them credit for
selfish and instinctive prudence. I supposed them
to value Parliamentary Government, and to have foresight
enough to know the alarming dangers to which they
would be exposed, if they allowed the armed interference
of Russia to overturn historical, limited, representative
institutions. But France and England both proved
to be blind, and deceived me. It was a horrible
mistake; and has issued in a horrible result.
The present condition of Europe, which ought to have
been foreseen by those governments, exculpates me for
having erred through expecting them to see their own
interests. Well, there is a providence in every
fact. Without this mistake the principles of
American republicanism would for a long time yet not
have found a fertile soil on that continent, where
it was considered wisdom to belong to the French school.
Now matters stand thus: that either the continent
of Europe has no future at all, or this future is American
republicanism. And who can believe that two hundred
millions of that continent, which is the mother of
such a civilization, are not to have any future at
all? Such a doubt would be almost blasphemy against
Providence. But there is a Providence indeed a
just, a bountiful Providence, and in it I trust, with
all the piety of my religion. I dare to say my
very self was an instrument of it. Even my being
here, when four months ago I was yet a prisoner of
the league of European despots in far Asia, and the
sympathy which your glorious people honours me with,
and the high benefit of the welcome of your Congress,
and the honour to be your guest, to be the guest of
your great Republic I, a poor exile is
there not a very intelligible manifestation of Providence
in it? the more, when I remember that the
name of your guest is by the furious rage of the Austrian
tyrant, nailed to the gallows.

I confidently trust that the nations
of Europe have a future. I am aware that this
future is vehemently resisted by the bayonets of absolutism;
but I know that though bayonets may give a defence,
they afford no seat to a prince. I trust in the
future of my native land, because I know that it is
worthy to have one, and that it is necessary to the
destinies of humanity. I trust to the principles
of republicanism; and, whatever may be my personal
fate, so much I know, that my country will preserve
to you and your glorious land an everlasting gratitude.

A toast in honour of Mr. Webster,
the Secretary of State, having then been proposed,
that gentleman responded in an ample speech, of which
the following is an extract:

Gentlemen, I do not propose at this
hour of the night, to entertain you by any general
disquisition upon the value of human freedom, upon
the inalienable rights of man, or upon any general
topics of that kind; but I wish to say a few words
upon the precise question, as I understand it, that
exists before the civilized world, between Hungary
and the Austrian Government, and I may arrange the
thoughts to which I desire to give utterance under
two or three general heads.

And in the first place I say, that
wherever there is in the Christian and civilized world
a nationality of character wherever there
exists a nation of sufficient knowledge and wealth
and population to constitute a Government, then a
National Government is a necessary and proper result
of nationality of character. We may talk of it
as we please, but there is nothing that satisfies
the human being in an enlightened age, unless he is
governed by his own countrymen and the institutions
of his own Government. No matter how easy be
the yoke of a foreign Power, no matter how lightly
it sits upon the shoulders, if it is not imposed by
the voice of his own nation and of his own country,
he will not, he cannot, and he means not to
be happy under its burden.

There is not a civilized and intelligent
man on earth that enjoys entire satisfaction in his
condition, if he does not live under the government
of his own nation his own country, whose
volitions and sentiments and sympathies are like
his own. Hence he cannot say “This is not
my country; it is the country of another Power; it
is a country belonging to somebody else.”
Therefore, I say that whenever there is a nation of
sufficient intelligence and numbers and wealth to maintain
a government, distinguished in its character and its
history and its institutions, that nation cannot be
happy but under a government of its own choice.

Then, sir, the next question is, whether
Hungary, as she exists in our ideas, as we see her,
and as we know her, is distinct in her nationality,
is competent in her population, is also competent in
her knowledge and devotion to correct sentiment, is
competent in her national capacity for liberty and
independence, to obtain a government that shall be
Hungarian out and out? Upon that subject, gentlemen,
I have no manner of doubt. Let us look a little
at the position in which this matter stands.
What is Hungary?

Hungary is about the size of Great
Britain, and comprehends nearly half of the territory
of Austria.

[According to one authority its population
is 14 millions and a half.]

It is stated by another authority
that the population of Hungary is nearly 14,000,000;
that of England (in 1841) nearly 15,000,000; that
of Prussia about 16,000,000.

Thus it is evident that, in point
of power, so far as power depends upon population,
Hungary possesses as much power as England proper,
or even as the kingdom of Prussia. Well, then,
there is population enough there are people
enough. Who, then, are they? They are distinct
from the nations that surround them. They are
distinct from the Austrians on the west, and the Turks
on the east; and I will say in the next place that
they are an enlightened nation. They have
their history; they have their traditions; they are
attached to their own institutions institutions
which have existed for more than a thousand years.

Gentlemen, it is remarkable that,
on the western coasts of Europe, political light exists.
There is a sun in the political firmament, and that
sun sheds his light on those who are able to enjoy
it. But in eastern Europe, generally speaking,
and on the confines between eastern Europe and Asia,
there is no political sun in the heavens. It is
all an arctic zone of political life. The luminary,
that enlightens the world in general, seldom rises
there above the horizon. The light which they
possess is at best crepuscular, a kind of twilight,
and they are under the necessity of groping about
to catch, as they may, any stray gleams of the light
of day. Gentlemen, the country of which your guest
to-night is a native is a remarkable exception.
She has shown through her whole history, for many
hundreds of years, an attachment to the principles
of civil liberty, and of law and order, and obedience
to the constitution which the will of the great majority
have established. That is the fact; and it ought
to be known wherever the question of the practicability
of Hungarian liberty and independence are discussed.
It ought to be known that Hungary stands out from
it above her neighbours in all that respects free
institutions, constitutional government, and a hereditary
love of liberty.

Gentlemen, my sentiments in regard
to this effort made by Hungary are here sufficiently
well expressed. In a memorial addressed to Lord
John Russell and Lord Palmerston, said to have been
written by Lord Fitzwilliam, and signed by him and
several other Peers and members of Parliament, the
following language is used, the object of the memorial
being to ask the mediation of England in favour of
Hungary.

“While so many of the nations
of Europe have engaged in revolutionary movements,
and have embarked in schemes of doubtful policy and
still more doubtful success, it is gratifying to the
undersigned to be able to assure your lordships that
the Hungarians demand nothing but the recognition
of ancient rights and the stability and integrity of
their ancient constitution. To your lordships
it cannot be unknown that that constitution bears
a striking family-resemblance to that of our own country.”

Gentlemen, I have said that a National
Government, where there is a distinct nationality,
is essential to human happiness. I have said that
in my opinion, Hungary is thus capable of human happiness.
I have said that she possesses that distinct nationality,
that power of population, and that of wealth, which
entitles her to have a Government of her own; and
I have now to add what I am sure will not sound well
upon the Upper Danube; and that is, that, in my humble
judgment, the imposition of a foreign yoke upon a
people capable of self-government, while it oppresses
and depresses that people, adds nothing to the strength
of those who impose that yoke. In my opinion,
Austria would be a better and a stronger Government
to-morrow if she confined the limits of her power
to hereditary and German dominions. Especially
if she saw in Hungary a strong, sensible, independent
neighbouring nation; because I think that the cost
of keeping Hungary quiet is not repaid by any benefit
derived from Hungarian levies or tributes. And
then again, good neighbourhood, and the goodwill and
generous sympathies of mankind, and the generosity
of character that ought to pervade the minds of Governments
as well as those of individuals, is vastly more promoted
by living in a state of friendship and amity with
those who differ from us in modes of government, than
by any attempt to consolidate power in the hands of
one over all the rest.

Gentlemen, the progress of things
is unquestionably onward. It is onward with respect
to Hungary. It is onward everywhere. Public
opinion, in my estimation at least, is making great
progress. It will penetrate all resources; it
will come more or less to animate all minds; and in
respect to that country, for which our sympathies to-night
have been so strongly invoked, I cannot but say that
I think the people of Hungary are an enlightened,
industrious, sober, well-inclined community; and I
wish only to add, that I do not now enter into any
discussion of the form of government which may be
proper for Hungary. Of course, all of you, like
myself, would be glad to see her, when she becomes
independent, embrace that system of government which
is most acceptable to ourselves. We shall rejoice
to see our American model upon the Lower Danube, and
on the mountains of Hungary. But that is not the
first step. It is not that which will be our
first prayer for Hungary. The first prayer shall
be, that Hungary may become independent of all foreign
power, that her destinies may be entrusted to her own
hands, and to her own discretion. I do not profess
to understand the social relations and connections
of races, and of twenty other things that may affect
the public institutions of Hungary. All I say
is, that Hungary can regulate these matters for herself
infinitely better than they can be regulated for her
by Austria, and therefore I limit my aspirations for
Hungary, for the present, to that single and simple
point HUNGARIAN INDEPENDENCE:

“Hungarian independence; Hungarian
control of her own destinies; and Hungary as a distinct
nationality among the nations of Europe.”

The toast was received with enthusiastic applause.

The President then announced the next toast

“The rights of states are only
valuable when subject to the free control of those
to whom they appertain, and utterly worthless if to
be determined by the sword of foreign interference.”

Mr. Douglas of Illinois, one of the
Candidates for the Presidency, in responding, spoke
at length, and denounced the injustice and folly of
England. In the close he said:

He regarded the intervention of Russia
in the affairs of Hungary as a palpable violation
of the laws of nations, that would authorize the United
States to interfere. If Russia, or Austria, or
any other power, should interfere again, then he would
determine whether or not we should act, his action
depending upon the circumstances as they should then
be presented. In the mean time, however, he would
proclaim the principle of the laws of nations:
he would instruct our ministers abroad to protest
the moment there was the first symptom of the violation
of these laws. He would show to Europe that we
had as much right to sympathize in a system of government
similar to our own, as they had in similar circumstances.
In his opinion, Hungary was better adapted for a liberal
movement than any other nation in Europe.

In conclusion, Mr. Douglas begged
leave to offer the following sentiment:

“Hungary: When she shall
make her next struggle for liberty, may the friends
of freedom throughout the world proclaim to the ears
of all European despots, Hands off, a clear field
and a fair fight, and God will protect the right.”

General Cass replied in a very energetic
speech, in which he stated that he was approaching
the age of three score years and ten. Turning
to Kossuth, he said:

Leader of your country’s revolution asserter
of the rights of man martyr of the principles
of national independence welcome to our
shores! Sir, the ocean, more merciful than the
wrath of tyrants, has brought you to a country of
freedom and of safety. That was a proud day for
you, but it was a prouder day for us, when you left
the shores of old Hellespont and put your foot upon
an American deck. Protected by American cannon,
with the stars of our country floating over you, you
could defy the world in arms! And, sir, here in
the land of Washington, it is not a barren welcome
that I desire to give you; but much further than that
I am willing to go. I am willing to lay down the
great principles of national rights, and adhere to
them. The sun of heaven never shone on such a
government as this. And shall we sit blindfolded,
with our arms crossed, and say to tyranny, “Prevail
in every other region of the world?” [Cries
of “No, no!”] I thank you for the response.
Every independent nation under Heaven has a right to
establish just such a government as it pleases.
And if the oppressed of any nation wish to throw off
their shackles, they have the right, without the interference
of any other; and, with the first and greatest of our
Presidents the father of his country I
trust we are prepared to say, that “we sympathize
with every oppressed nation which unfurls the banner
of freedom.” And I am willing, as a member
of Congress, to pass a declaration to-morrow, in the
name of the American people, maintaining that sentiment.

A toast was then proposed:

“Turkey: Her noble hospitality
extended to a fallen patriot, even at the risk of
war, proves her to be worthy of the respect and friendship
of liberal nations.”

Kossuth replied as follows:

Sir, I feel very thankful for having
the opportunity to express in this place my everlasting
gratitude to the Sultan of Turkey and to his noble
people. I am not a man to flatter any one.
Before God, nations, and principles I bow before
none else. But I bow with warm and proud gratitude,
before the memory of the generous conduct I met in
Turkey. And I entreat your kind permission to
state some facts, which perhaps may contribute something
to a better knowledge of that country, because I am
confident that, when it is once better known, more
attention will be bestowed on its future.

Firstly, as to myself. When I
was in that country, and Russia and Austria, in the
full pride of their victory, were imposing their will
upon the Sultan, and claiming the surrender of me and
my associates, it is true that a grand divan was held
at Constantinople, and not very favourable opinions
were pronounced by a certain party opposed to the
existing government in Turkey, whereby the Sublime
Porte itself was led to believe that there was no
help for us poor exiles, but to abandon our faith
and become Mohammedans, in order that Turkey might
be able to protect us. I thereupon made a declaration,
which I believe I was bound in honesty to make.
But I owe it to the honour of the Sultan to say openly,
that even before I had declared that I would rather
die than accept this condition before that
declaration was conveyed to Constantinople, and before
any one there could have got knowledge that I had
appealed to the public opinion of England in relation
thereto before all this was known at Constantinople,
when the decision of that great divan was announced
to the Sultan to be unfavourable to the exiles, he
out of the generosity of his own heart, without knowing
what we were willing to accept or not to accept, declared:
“They are upon the soil; they have trusted to
my honour, to my justice to my religion and
they shall not be deceived. Rather will I accept
war than deliver them up.” That is entirely
his merit. But notwithstanding these high obligations
which I feel towards Turkey, I never will try to engage
public sympathy and attention towards a country towards
a power upon the basis of one fact.
But there are many considerations in reference to
Turkey which merit the full attention of the United
States of America.

When we make a comparison between
the Turkish Government and that of Austria and Russia
in respect to religious liberty, the scale turns entirely
in favour of Turkey. There is not only toleration
for all religions, but the government does not mix
with their religious affairs, but leaves these entirely
to their own control; whereas under Austria, although
self-government was secured by three victorious revolutions,
by treaties which ensured these revolutions, and by
hundreds of laws; still Austria has blotted out from
Hungary the self-government of the Protestant church,
while Turkey accords and protects the self-government
of every religious denomination. Russia (as is
well known) taking religion as a political tool, persecutes
the Roman Catholics, and indeed the Greeks and Jews,
in such a manner that the heart of man must revolt
against it. The Sultan, whenever a fanatic dares
to encroach on the religious freedom of any one at
all in his wide dominions, is the inexorable champion
of that religious liberty which is permitted everywhere
under his rule.

Again, I must cite from the history
of Hungary this fact; that when one-half of Hungary
was under Turkish dominion, and the other half under
Austrian, religious liberty was always encouraged in
that part which was under the Turkish rule; and there
was not only a full development of Protestantism,
but Unitarianism also was protected; yet by Austria
the Unitarians were afterwards excluded from every
civil right, because they were Unitarians, although
our revolution restored their natural rights.
Such was the condition in respect to religious liberty
under the Austrian and under the Turkish dominion.

Now, in respect to municipal self-government,
Hungary and all those different provinces which are
now opposed to the Austrian empire, if
indeed an empire which only rests upon the goodwill
of a foreign master, can be said to exist, or even
to vegetate, all those different provinces
are absorbed by Austria. There was not one which
had not in former times a constitutional life, not
one which Austria did not deprive of it by centralizing
all power in her own court. Such is the principle
of Christian rule!

Take, on the other hand, the Turk.
In Turkey I have not only seen the municipal self-government
of cities developed to a very considerable degree,
but I have seen administration of justice very much
like the institution of the jury. I have seen
a public trial in a case where one party was a Turk,
and the other party a Christian; where the municipal
authorities of the Christian and of the Turkish population
were called together to be not only the witnesses
of the trial, but mutually to control and direct it
with perfect publicity. But more yet: there
exist Wallachia and Moldavia, under Turkish dominion;
and the Turkish nation, which has conquered that province
and is dominant, yet, out of respect for national
self-government, has prescribed to its own self not
to have the right of a house to dwell in, or a single
foot of soil in that land. In all the domestic
concerns of the province which for centuries
has had a charter, by which the self-government of
Wallachia and Moldavia was ensured it is
worthy to mention that the Turk has never broken his
oath. Whereas in the European continent there
is scarcely a single dynasty, whether king, prince,
duke, or emperor, which has not broken faith before
God and man. Now, the existence of this Turkey,
great as the present power of Europe is, is indispensable
to the security of Europe. You know that in the
Crimea, in the time of Catherine, Potemkin wrote the
words, “Here passes the way to Constantinople.”
The policy indicated by him at that time is always
the policy of St. Petersburg; and it is of Constantinople
that Napoleon rightly said, that the power which has
it in command, if it is willing, is able, to rule
three-quarters of the world. Now, it is the intention,
it is the consistent policy of the Russian cabinet,
to lay hold of Constantinople; and therefore to protect
the independent existence of Turkey is necessary to
Europe: for if Turkey be crushed, Russia becomes
not only entirely predominant, as she already is,
but becomes the single mistress of Asia and of Europe.
And to uphold this independence of Turkey, gentlemen,
nothing is wanted but some encouragement from such
a place as the United States. Since Turkey has
lost the possession of Buda in Hungary, its power
is declining. But why? Because from that
time European diplomatists began to succeed in persuading
Turkey that she had no strength to stand by herself;
and by and bye it became the rule in Constantinople
that every petty interior question needed European
diplomacy. Now I say, Turkey has vitality such
as not many nations have. It has a power that
not many have. Turkey wants nothing but a consciousness
of its own powers and encouragement to stand upon its
own feet; and this encouragement, if it comes as counsel,
as kind advice, out of such a place as the United
States, I am confident will not only be thankfully
heard, but also very joyfully followed. That is
the only thing which is wanted there.

And besides this political consideration
that the existence of Turkey, as it is, is necessary
to the future of Europe, there are also high commercial
considerations proper to interest and attract the United
States. The freedom of commerce on the Danube
is a law of nations guaranteed by treaties; and yet
there exists no freedom. It is in the
hands of Russia. Turkey, to be sure, is very anxious
to re-establish freedom; but there is nobody to back
her in her demands. Turkey can also present to
the manufacturing industry of such a country as the
United States a far larger and more important market
than all China, with her two hundred and fifty millions
of inhabitants.

But one consideration I can mention and
though it has no reference to the public opinion here,
I beg permission to avail myself of this opportunity
to pronounce it and give it publicity and
that is, that I hope in the name of the future freedom
and independence of the European nations, those provinces
of Turkey which are inhabited by Christians will not,
out of theoretical passion, and out of attachment to
a mere word, neglect that course of action which alone
can lead them to freedom and independence. Gentlemen,
I declare that should the next revolutionary movement
in Europe extend to the Turkish provinces of Moldavia
and Servia, and should Turkey hereby fall, this
would not become a benefit to those provinces, but
would benefit Russia only; because then, Turkey no
more existing, all those provinces will be naturally
absorbed by Russia; whereas, to hold fast to Turkey that
Turkey, which respects religious liberty, gives them
entirely and fully self-government.

So much, gentlemen, I desired to express.
I believe you will excuse me for the inappropriate
manner in which I have acquitted myself of this, which
I considered to be my duty in expressing my thanks
to Turkey. I declare before you that I am fully
convinced of the identity of interest between Hungary
and Turkey. We have a common enemy therefore
Hungary and Turkey are by natural ties drawn into
a close alliance against that enemy. I declare
that not only out of gratitude, but also out of a
knowledge of this community of interest, I will never
in my life let an opportunity escape where I in my
humble capacity can contribute to the glory, welfare,
and happiness of Turkey, but will consider it the duty
of honour toward my country to be the truest, most
faithful friend of the Turkish empire.

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